jeremyfingertips

This is no place, but here I am

Eclectic Playlist Series 4.01 – January 2017

In 1978, John Prine released a wonderful album called Bruised Orange. According to a story he told a couple of years later, the record company, doing that record-company thing back in the day, sent him a case of oranges as part of some kind of promotional effort or another. When it came time to make his next album, he figured he would call it Storm Windows. Because he needed some. This, at least, is the story he told at the time. And I’m guessing he actually had no idea what kind of future we were going to end up in when he sang the song that closes out EPS 4.01.

This playlist, I feel compelled to report, was created in an unusual flow. I’m not sure if it’s any better or worse than my previous output but I will say that I found myself feeling no need to edit or tweak the way I normally do, even if it meant rather inexplicably returning to Bonnie Raitt after just a couple of months. Nothing against Bonnie she’s just not that close to the top of my list normally! And now I also don’t seem to feel the need to comment other than to say that the more time goes by the more I love Liz Phair. And the more David Bowie seems to represent the apotheosis of rock music.

These opinions are my own and do not represent the views of the current Administration. And never will.

p.s. “I Live My Broken Dreams” really does end that abruptly. An impossible segue.

“Opus 23” – Dustin O’Halloran (Piano Solos Vol. 2, 2006)
“No Plan” – David Bowie (No Plan EP, 2017)
“Lorelei” – Cocteau Twins (Treasure, 1984)
“So You’re Leaving” – Al Green (Let’s Stay Together, 1972)
“Silence Kid” – Pavement (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, 1994)
“I Live My Broken Dreams” – Gramma’s Boyfriend (PERM, 2015)
“Butch and Butch” – Oliver Nelson (The Blues and the Abstract Truth, 1961)
“Alison Gross” – Steeleye Span (Parcel of Rogues, 1973)
“Run Back to You” – Marshall Crenshaw (The 9 Volt Years, 1998)
“I Just Can’t Live My Life (Without You Babe)” – Linda Jones (single, 1969)
“Birth, School, Work, Death” – The Godfathers (Birth, School, Work, Death, 1988)
“But Will Our Tears” – Soy Un Caballo (Les Heures de Raison, 2007)
“Surf’s Up” – The Beach Boys (Surf’s Up, 1971)
“Baby Mine” – Bonnie Raitt and Was (Not Was) (Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films, 1988)
“Time to Dance” – The Jezabels (The Brink, 2014)
“E-Bow the Letter” – R.E.M. (New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996)
“I’ll Stop At Nothing” – Sandie Shaw (single, 1965)
“When You Find Out” – The Nerves (The Nerves EP, 1976)
“My Bionic Eyes” – Liz Phair (Liz Phair, 2003)
“Living in the Future” – John Prine (Storm Windows, 1980)

Free and legal MP3: Jesca Hoop (minimal, agitated)

Itchy and curious, “The Lost Sky” grabbed my ear in a “where is this going?” kind of way, as the song’s opening verses unfold over minimal, agitated acoustic guitar work and a precise, intermittent bass line.

“The Lost Sky” – Jesca Hoop

Itchy and curious, “The Lost Sky” grabs my ear in a “where is this going?” kind of way, as the song’s opening verses unfold over minimal, agitated acoustic guitar work and a precise, intermittent bass line. But as the song proceeds I slowly get the idea that where the song is going is where it already is: the ear has to adjust to its edgy open-endedness, its determined lack of solid ground. Symbolic of its restless core is what happens at the end of the (not very chorus-like) chorus (1:23-1:26). Listen first to how the melody has slowed down and seems at last to move towards resolution; and then, nope, it turns out that the note the ear is waiting for (1:23-1:26) is not an ending but a beginning: the resolving note starts the next verse and off we go again.

Other things begin to anchor me as I listen, starting first and foremost with Hoop’s harmonies, which kick in at 1:12 on the song’s incisive question “Why would you say those words to me if you could not follow through?” The narrator is a brokenhearted lover, and as the song plucks along my heart warms with the understanding that it only ever takes a talented songwriter to render the familiar unfamiliar. Here we get propulsive but diligent music, evocative lyrics, and then, yes, those increasingly startling and satisfying harmonies (where she takes it at 2:31 caused me just about to gasp), and there I am, embraced yet again, with gratitude, by the potency of song. It’s a nice place to be right about now.

Born in California, singer/songwriter Jesca Hoop moved to Manchester (UK) in 2010. “The Lost Sky” is from her forthcoming album, Memories Are Now, coming out in February on Sub Pop Records. Here is someone who apparently cycles through Fingertips in five-year loops; Hoop was previously featured in 2007 and 2012.

MP3 via Colorado Public Radio.

Free and legal MP3: The William Shakes (Shakespearean indie rock)

The William Shakes is a project established to create indie rock songs from “de-contextualized” Shakespearean dialogue. Yeah, I know. But trust me, this works amazingly well.

“The Fault” – The William Shakes

At once comfortable and intriguing, “The Fault” is better than it has any right to be, and certainly better than you are imagining it could be, based on this: The William Shakes is a project established to create indie rock songs from “de-contextualized” Shakespearean dialogue. Yeah, I know. But trust me, this works amazingly well.

The mastermind here is Boston area musician Mark McGettrick. According to press material, McGettrick was inspired by David Bowie’s famous “cut-up” methodology for writing lyrics, and for whatever reason thought to apply it to the Bard. McGettrick selects a character from a Shakespeare play, isolates that character’s lines, randomly puts them back together, and then “curates” them into song lyrics. “The Fault” is based on lines spoken by the character Cassius in Julius Caesar, who among other things uttered the famous “The fault, dear Brutus is not in our stars/But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” The project has yielded a four-song EP, entitled How Goes The Night?, which is coming out in February.

Back to the song itself, which is almost hypnotically powerful–all forward motion and economical guitar accents, with a cascading melody often magnetized around one central note. McGettrick has an incisive, slightly wavery voice that wanders DIY-ishly off pitch in a fetching way that somehow makes the words all the more absorbing. And what words!; and how they shine a shrewd light on what song lyrics have to do and what they don’t have to do in service of convincing music. Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter has built-in scannability (e.g., “So well as by reflection, I your glass”), his vocabulary relentless vigor; these two factors help to generate a song with ineffable backbone. As a long-time fan of song lyrics as sound versus sense, I am not bothered if I do not understand what a singer is singing or what the words actually mean. In fact, I believe that a song’s overall meaning is sometimes clearer on an abstract and intuitive level than a concrete and explainable one. Listen to “The Fault” and maybe you’ll hear what I’m talking about.

McGettrick composed and produced all songs on the EP himself, and played guitar, bass, and percussion as well. A handful of other musicians contributed, from Boston and beyond. McGettrick has been around the Boston music scene for a number of years but this appears to be his first solo recording.

Free and legal MP3: Orouni

Acoustic rock from Paris, gentle and assured

“The Lives of Elevators” – Orouni

What a fluid and charming piece of work this one is, buoyed by an effortless sense of melody and the fragile but authoritative voice of the eponymous Orouni. A Parisian singer/songwriter whose self-proclaimed influences include the likes of Leonard Cohen and The Kinks, Orouni makes carefully composed songs in which the notes seem handcrafted, one by one, then sung with an ongoing aura of surprise and assurance. The chord change at 0:56, gentle and resolute, is emblematic of the song’s pervading ambience of precipitant redesign, which culminates at 2:37 with a trumpet solo. It is both unexpected and ideal.

“The Lives of Elevators” is a live performance, from a recently folded-up French music site called Findspire, the offerings of which remain available on YouTube. Watch the video and be lulled by the easy-going flow, as we check in visually with each musician, so locked into the groove that they somehow seem to be playing one thing but listening to another. I mean that as a compliment, even if that doesn’t sound like one.

Orouni has recorded three albums to date, which you can listen to and purchase via Bandcamp. I recommend a visit there. “The Lives of Elevators” is based on a 2008 New Yorker article of the same name, written by Nick Paumgarten, which itself is worth reading. The song is a new one, which might appear on the next Orouni album, which might be released this year. Plans are yet unclear. Thanks to Orouni for the MP3.

Maybe it’s right to be nervous now

Eclectic Playlist Series 3.11 – Dec. 2016

So this is not really a holiday playlist, because I, like a lot of people I know, don’t feel especially festive this year. But I snuck a couple of seasonal songs in anyway, both of which I appreciate for their arrangements, however vastly different they are. This is in fact a list about differences: beautiful and jarring, old and new, angry and gentle, it’s all here. Some things you might want to know: Vegas was a one-off effort by Terry Hall (the Specials) and Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) that sank commercially but soared artistically (thanks to George from Between Two Islands for this one); Sad13 is Sadie Dupuis, front woman for the band Speedy Ortiz and “<2” (say “Less Than Two”) is from her first solo album; “Lily” is one of only a handful of stand-alone older songs Kate Bush performed at her now-legendary concerts in London in 2014, and I wasn’t there but I wish I had been, and I’m buying the new album, and she’s amazing; yes the new Bon Iver is pretty outré but oddly compelling (and note the song title is supposed to have two symbols after it but they are not translating properly here in WordPress so I left them out); yes this is the “clean” version of “We the People…” but it seemed a reasonable gesture given that by and large these playlists are safe for work and young children–I encourage you on your own to check out the whole album, in its explicit form; and yes I had just featured Leonard Cohen two playlists ago so the rules prohibited a direct homage to the great man but I really like what Christina Rosenvinge has done with “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and adore its Spanish title, “Impermeable Azul,” and like Christina Rosenvinge in any case so here you are.

And yet, that said, 2016 has come to an end and I did in fact repeat one artist this year. So much for rules. Anyone notice?

“Open Your Eyes” – The Lords of the New Church (The Lords of the New Church, 1982)
“Walk Into the Wind” – Vegas (Vegas, 1992)
“<2” – Sad13 (Slugger, 2016)
“Alchemy” – Richard Lloyd (Alchemy, 1979)
“Lily” – Kate Bush (The Red Shoes, 1993)
“I’m Gonna Git Ya” – Betty Harris (single, 1967)
“10 d E A T h b R E a s T” – Bon Iver (22, A Million, 2016)
“Evil Urges” – My Morning Jacket (Evil Urges, 2005)
“Talk of the Town” – The Pretenders (Pretenders II, 1980)
“The Catastrophe and the Cure” – Explosions in the Sky (All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, 2006)
“Someone to Lay Down Beside Me” – Karla Bonoff (Karla Bonoff, 1977)
“We The People…” – A Tribe Called Quest (We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, 2016)
“Philadelphia” – Magazine (The Correct Use of Soap, 1980)
“L’estasi dell’oro” – Ennio Morricone (The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 1966)
“We Three Kings” – The Roches (We Three Kings, 1990)
“Run” – Amy MacDonald (This Is The Life, 2007)
“God’s Children” – The Kinks (Percy, 1971)
“Strange Things Happening Every Day” – Sister Rosetta Tharpe (single, 1945)
“Lt. Kijé: Troika” – Caliban Quartet of Bassoons (Caliban Does Christmas, 2005)
“Impermeable Azul” – Christina Rosenvinge (According to Leonard Cohen, 2012)

Free and legal MP3: Pop & Obachan (charming, freewheeling, good-spirited)

At once woozy and perky, “I Bet High” presents us with a brief but much-needed shot of good spirit and motion to counter the tar pit of despair many of us have fallen into since 11/9.

“I Bet High” – Pop & Obachan

At once woozy and perky, “I Bet High” presents us with a brief but much-needed shot of good spirit and motion to counter the tar pit of despair many of us have fallen into since 11/9. But blink and you’ll miss this one: no sooner does the listener feel fully embraced by the chunky, freewheeling vibe then the song plunks to a close.

So while I like this a lot there is no hiding the fact that “I Bet High” is an odd song, with an ad hoc feeling to both structure and texture. The tinkly electric guitar sounds like some kind of far-away-in-time instrument; Emma Tringali sings with a tone mixing come-hither-ness and a playful shove, awash in reverb; and the entire song bounces along without much of a rudder—the verses melt into a charming if woolly indistinctness, while the chorus glides through our awareness before we even realize that’s what we just heard. In the end, the song’s playful, “look-at-what-I-just-found” sensibility is central to its appeal. Put it on repeat and enjoy.

Pop & Obachan is a studio duo and a six-piece live band, led by Tringali and Jake Smisloff and based in upstate New York. “I Bet High” is a track from their debut album, entitled Misc. Excellence, which was recorded in their apartment on a tape deck and released last month. You can listen to the whole thing and buy it via Bandcamp. Thanks to the band for the MP3. [MP3 no longer available.]

Free and legal MP3: The Blessed Isles (’80s-style electro-pop)

“Confession” – The Blessed Isles

Brisk, skittish, and still rather lovely, “Confession” presents as a knowing homage to ’80s electro-pop while sparkling with an energy that feels current rather than nostalgic. The effortless, sing-song-y melodicism evokes Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, without perhaps that band’s knob-twiddly thickness, while the unusually effective mix of synthesizer and guitar calls New Order to mind.

Only here, notice, the guitar doesn’t loom heavily at the bottom of the mix but provides a lilting, melodic counterpoint to the song’s electronic pulse. In the extended introduction, the guitar at first works with its own variation of a heartbeat, but later on (0:45) finds its upper register and snuggles a precise and concise melodic line into the rubbery electronic milieu. Listen in particular to when it returns, between verses, at 1:37, all glide and grace, and a seductive counterpoint to singer Aaron Closson’s sweet but substantive tenor.

The Blessed Isles is the duo of Closson and Nolan Thies. Based in Brooklyn, the band self-released an EP in 2011, and was signed to Saint Marie Records the following year. “Confession” is a track off their debut full-length album, Straining Hard Against the Strength of Night, released by Saint Marie back in May. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3:Case Conrad (muscular, concise rootsy rock)

Modest and controlled at the outset, with an ever-so-subtle swing, “The Swim” develops organically into a muscular bit of rootsy rock, timeless in its approach and vibe.

“The Swim” – Case Conrad

Modest and controlled at the outset, with an ever-so-subtle swing, “The Swim” develops organically into a muscular bit of rootsy rock, timeless in its approach and vibe. A lot here rests in the capable singing voice of Gustav Haggren, the veteran Swede who is one of three lead vocalists in Case Conrad. Haggren’s is a burnished baritone, a voice that sounds like a friend and a stranger, a plea and a bargain, a dream and a disappointment. It’s a rich, human voice, unshowy and entirely at home in this easy-going composition, with its major-minor alternations and satisfying melodic resolutions (the sturdy run first heard from 0:51 to 0:58 is especially pleasurable, if you happen to be a chord progression fan).

One of the song’s agreeable touches is this odd little sidestep it takes after the second two choruses, when it deconstructs itself into 6/8 time, with a slightly loopy, Tom Waitsian flair. There’s no particular reason for it, but that’s where the magic in songwriting often lies.

Case Conrad was formed by Haggren in the wake of the 2009 breakup of his band Gustav and the Seasick Sailors, who were a notable Fingertips favorite back in the day (featured in 2005 and 2008, if you’re curious, and aren’t you, a little?). Four of the band members are from Sweden and one is from Portugal; residence-wise they are now split between Malmö and Barcelona.

“The Swim” is a track from A Tightrope Wish, the band’s third album, released last month on Stargazer Records/This Is Forte.

Sometimes I can’t believe how dark it can be

Eclectic Playlist Series 3.10 – Nov. 2016

How Fabrizio De Andre sounds in the song “Il Testamento di Tito” is how I want to sound right now: weary but centered, soothing and heartbroken, resigned to the wickedness of the world while standing up to it. The narrator is Titus, one of the two thieves in the New Testament said to have died on the cross with Jesus, who here slyly annotates the Ten Commandments, one by one, by relating his personal experience with each. A rich, flowing, Italian-language narrative, “Il Testamento di Tito” is a subtle miracle of texture and pacing, and is well worth further investigation (you might start here; translation of the lyrics here). The other songs this month are all in English and speak (directly or indirectly) for themselves, haunted, as has everything been since 11/9, by the the deep shadow of lunacy, bigotry, and corruption spreading across our unhappy country, and by the resilience we are called upon to embody in its wake. Sorry to get heavy here but this is heavy shit and music does, somehow, help. Be careful out there.

“Walk This World” – Heather Nova (Oyster, 1995)
“Inwards” – Big Country (The Crossing, 1983)
“The End of Our Love” – Nancy Wilson (b-side, 1968)
“I Don’t Want to Know” – Matthew Sweet (Kimi Ga Suki Raifu, 2003)
“Changes” – Stars (The Five Ghosts, 2015)
“Il Testamento di Tito” – Fabrizio De Andre (La Buona Novella, 1970)
“Flower Girl” – Joe Henry (Trampoline, 1996)
“Passerby” – Quilt (Plaza, 2016)
“Call It Something Nice” – The Small Faces (The Autumn Stone, 1969)
“Side of the Road” – Lucinda Williams (Lucinda Williams, 1988)
“Worn Me Down” – Rachael Yamagata (Happenstance, 2004)
“Play It Safe” – Iggy Pop (Soldier, 1980)
“Dawned on Me” – Wilco (The Whole Love, 2011)
“Kiss My Love Goodbye” – Bettye Swan (b-side, 1974)
“Into the Fire” – Sarah McLachlan (Solace, 1991)
“Out of the Blue” – The Band (The Last Waltz, 1978)
“My Mistakes Were Made For You” – The Last Shadow Puppets (The Age of the Understatement, 2007)
“Trouble Down Here Below” – Lou Rawls (Carryin’ On!, 1966)
“Nightingale” – The Honey Trees (Bright Fire, 2014)
“Book of Days” – Enya (Shepherd Moons, 1991)

Free and legal MP3: The Holiday Crowd (brisk & jangly, w/ killer chorus)

The chorus is a recurringly climactic gem, with a shiny-catchy feeling that marvelously transmutes the song’s influences into something all its own.

“Anything Anything” – The Holiday Crowd

If you have any long-term knowledge of rock’n’roll history, when you listen to “Anything Anything” you are likely going to be put in the mind of the Smiths. This is not a bad thing; the Smiths were a seminal band, trafficking in a sound so unique as to be sui generis. Pretty much anyone influenced by the Mancunian quartet at all ends up kind of sounding like them in certain unmistakable ways.

But I will quickly note that “Anything Anything” is not Smiths 2.0; it’s quite a wonderful piece of pop on its own terms. If it manifests shared characteristics with Morrissey-Marr compositions—from the fade-in intro through lead singer Imran Haniff’s discontented lilt to the chiming guitar arpeggios—the song at the same time has an underlying energy that feels warmer and brighter, and a structure less willfully idiosyncratic. And boy oh boy this chorus, which feels almost goose-bumpily climactic every time it recurs, with a shiny-catchy feeling that marvelously transmutes the song’s influences into something all its own.

That all said, a visit to the band’s Facebook page informs us that they may not be in love with the Smiths comparisons. Oops! But then again, not. Because look, it’s my (self-appointed) job to put new songs I’m enjoying into their musical contexts. I compare new bands to older bands regularly. I try to do so creatively and sensitively but to act as if an obvious aural correlate doesn’t exist, or to feel it is somehow taboo to point it out, is silly. I mean, were I to write about this song and not mention the Smiths, most of you would wonder how I managed to miss that. Online commenters love to rail against “lazy” reviewers who use comparisons rather than descriptors, but this isn’t a zero-sum game. I believe in comparisons and descriptors, and anything else that assists with the eternally thorny problem of dancing about architecture, as it were. It is no more a crime to be influenced by a major musical antecedent than it is to point out this influence. End of soapbox.

The Holiday Crowd is a quartet from Toronto. They formed in 2010, and released their first album in 2013, which you can listen to on Bandcamp. “Anything Anything” is a song from their forthcoming self-titled album, due out in January. Thanks to Magnet Magazine for the MP3.